


Why I Think Kent Parson Has Borderline Personality Disorder

by garden of succulents (staranise)



Series: Lis's Check Please! Meta [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: BPD Kent Parson, Borderline Personality Disorder, Canon Analysis, Character Diagnosis, Close Read, Epikegster, Mental Health Issues, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-10-31 10:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10897845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/garden%20of%20succulents
Summary: Meta: A mental health professional's analysis of just what the fuck is up with Kent Parson.





	Why I Think Kent Parson Has Borderline Personality Disorder

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Tumblr [here](http://garden-of-succulents.tumblr.com/post/146678121831/okay-now-its-time-for-why-i-think-kent-parson-has); crossposted to the AO3 for posterity and ease of access.

Okay now it’s time for **why I think Kent Parson has Borderline Personality Disorder**.

(For the record, BPD is Borderline Personality Disorder.  Confusingly, BPD sometimes also means BiPolar Disorder, a completely different condition; but when people talk about Kent having BPD, they generally mean the first one.)

Hi I’m Lis, and I’m a graduate student in Counselling Psychology.  My area of specialization is complex trauma and PTSD, which has a huge overlap with Borderline.  I have a kind of radar when it comes to this stuff, and it went off like crazy at Parse.

I mean, maybe Parse is actually pretty mentally healthy and just had a bad night or whatever.  That happens.  But, well, it’s a harder headcanon to convince me of.

Borderline Personality Disorder is a constellation of symptoms that result in difficulties with regulating emotion, responding to stress, and maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships.  It’s a result of toxic stress in early childhood, usually some kind of emotional neglect and/or chronic abuse.  

While most children learn from their caregivers how to healthily recognize and respond to their emotions and those of others, children who grow up to have BPD had thwarted opportunities for learning this.  Borderline is an incredibly diverse condition and people who have it can vary a lot from person to person; what they have in common is a lack of skills when it comes to staying on an emotionally healthy, even keel, telling where they end and other people begin, tolerating ambiguity, and handling conflict in relationships.

To meet the diagnosis for Borderline that I was trained on, you need to meet five of the nine diagnostic criteria, so let’s walk Kent through that.

**1\.   Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.**

_“You can’t–you don’t just come to my fucking school unannounced”_  
“Because you shut me out-”  
“–And corner me in my room”  
“I’m trying to help–”  
“And expect me to do whatever you want–”  
“Fuck–Jack!!  What do you want me to say?  That I miss you? I miss you, OK? …I miss you.”  
“…You always say that.”

-[Parse III, panel 4](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/111603787382)

Let’s put it this way: Most people, after five years of no contact, would conclude that their ex-BFF is not interested in them anymore and _get on with their fucking lives._   They’d go find someone who treats them better, who loves them more, who gives them the time of day.  Parse, on the other hand? 

_“I’ll tell the GMs you’re on board and they can free up cap space. Then you can be done with this shitty team. You and me–“_

-[Parse III, panel 3](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/111603787382)

Parse has _kept the dream alive_  that one day he and Jack are going to get back together and everything is going to be beautiful and okay again.  He rejects your reality and substitutes his own, in which Jack wants anything to do with him.

A lot of people with BPD struggle with intense wishful thinking. They don’t know how actual emotional health works, so they look at other people and try to guess.  It seems that relationships are rich and fulfilling and seem to help, so they think, maybe obtaining that relationship will help!  “Maybe if I’m in a relationship, then I’ll feel okay.”  “Maybe if I have a baby, then I’ll feel okay.”  “Maybe if I have a dedicated following as an artist, then I’ll feel okay.”  It’s literally an addictive process.  Parse knows that when he was with Jack he felt happy, he felt connected and fulfilled, so now he thinks that Jack is the magic pill to cure his isolation and loneliness.  And he is clinging to that dream, desperately, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

**2\.  A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterised by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.**

_Hey, well, call me if you reconsider or whatever._

-[Parse III, panel 8](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/111603787382)

Oh boy, you can _see this happen onscreen._ One minute, Parse is trying to talk Jack into joining his team. He’s got big hopes and everything’s gonna be great.  Then Jack says no, and Parse _flips the fuck out._   He suddenly says the worst things you can possibly say to Jack (”fucked up”, “worthless”, “I’m sure [your choices] will make your father proud”); he’s hitting back as hard as he can because Jack is suddenly the awful evil person who said no, who’s abandoning him.

Then he’s not even two feet away before he’s like, “Oh, but if you do want to get together, that would be cool too.”

MAKE UP YOUR MIND KENNY!  But he can’t.  He can’t see a middle ground, a way that Jack might make different choices and not buy into the reunion Kent is dreaming of, but might still be friends.

**3\. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.**

_Kent “You May Not Know Who I Am, But You’ll Want A Selfie With Me” Parson_  
-[Notes on Parse III](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/110479351702)  
“Parson’s a modest bro.”  
[-Parse II, panel 7](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/111612563717)

"I’ll be whoever you want me to be” syndrome, which we only see hints of in canon.  It’s what lands Parse the “manipulative” label, because he’ll cozy up to the Wellies and act like they’re cool, and then call them a shitty team out of earshot.

“Unstable sense of self” can also mean an unstable ability to integrate all the layers of self, body and emotions and thoughts and relationships, usually because people with Borderline learned really young that for their survival, they had to dissociate these things, separate their wants and needs and understanding of the universe from the way they interact with people.  

To a lot of us, Parse’s extremely [image-conscious](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/110479351702), [status-conscious](http://66.media.tumblr.com/11bdd6e463266be53a8cfa18c2a7f4c9/tumblr_nq4e71LCDR1szaospo3_250.jpg) exterior (and the very chill way he greets Jack) being so deeply at odds with someone who [still mourns Jack’s absence](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/119063398247) (even if the picture is a joke, it’s speaking to something) and would pull strings to get him on the Aces without question is a big sign of this inability to integrate.  

(I’m skipping two diagnostic criteria from the DSM now, because we have absolutely no in-canon evidence for them: Impulsivity in at least two areas that are self-damaging, and recurrent suicidality and self-injury.  However, you’ll see them pop up a lot in fanon characterizations.)

**4\.  Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood - intense feelings that can last from a few hours to a few days.**

_This is all so crazy, everybody seems so famous_  
My tummy’s turnin’ and I’m feelin’ kinda homesick  
Too much pressure and I’m nervous  
That’s when the taxi man turned on the radio

 _And the Jay-Z song was on_  
And the Jay-Z song was on  
And the Jay-Z song was on

 _So I put my hands up, they’re playin’ my song_  
The butterflies fly away  
I’m noddin’ my head like Yeah!  
Movin’ my hips like Yeah!

 _Got my hands up, they’re playin’ my song_  
And now I’m gonna be okay  
Yeah! It’s a party in the USA!  
Yeah! It’s a party in the USA! 

-”Party in the USA”

In the comic we see that on-a-dime anger in _Parse III._ So Ngozi’s consistent pairing of Kent and “Party in the USA” is interesting to me, with its hints of negative feelings that “fly away” quickly too.  It’s not the surest bet on this list, but it’s got a hint.

**5\.  Chronic feelings of emptiness.**

[There’s literally a joke that hinges on this](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/119063398247).  Also, let’s remember:  “ _I miss you, OK? …I miss you.” / "…You always say that.“_

(This is, incidentally, a by-product of chronic dissociation and inability to emotionally self-regulate.  A lot of times it’s because without outside help, people with BPD _literally cannot feel_  their own day-to-day inner physical sensations or emotions.)

**6\.  Inappropriate intense anger or difficulty controlling anger.**

_”…Huh, well, shit. Okay.  …You know what, Zimmermann? You think you’re too fucked up to care about? That you’re not good enough?  Everyone already knows what you are but it’s people like me who still care. You’re scared everyone else is going to find out you’re worthless, right?  Oh, don’t worry, just give it a few seasons, Jack. Trust me.“_

-[Parse III, panel 5](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/111603787382)

‘Nough said.

(I could also make an argument for the last criterion, “Transient, stress-related paranoid ideas or severe dissociative symptoms.”–but I don’t think we see enough to know whether Parse’s frenzy to know about what teams Jack is talking to is normal business concerns, or him actually being paranoid that Jack is going to abandon him “again” by not falling back into Kent’s arms, which Kent never had any promise Jack was going to do in the first place.)

Yeah, that’s all I’ve got the energy for right now, but there you go. Hit me up if you have questions.


End file.
